The painted bedsheet held aloft in the away end at the Emirates on Sunday read: ‘Where will it stop?’ It was a complaint about the fact that Manchester City’s travelling fans had been charged £62 for tickets to see their team play Arsenal — a fee that has become symbolic of the apparent money grubbing that governs English top-flight football.

Sixty-two quid. It is, by anyone’s standards, a wedge. For that price you could have five trips to the cinema. Two goes on the London Eye. All five seasons of Breaking Bad downloaded from iTunes. Fourteen pints in a Battersea gastropub. (This last one may sound like you’re being fleeced for your lager, and hey — you’re right. It’s SW11, it’s £4.40 a pint. We gentrified.)

All of these, you might argue, would provide better value, in terms of minutes of entertainment per pound spent, than watching a football match.

Football used to be a cheap afternoon out. Now it is in line with the price of going to the ballet, the theatre or The Proms. Actually, it’s cheaper to go to The Proms.

There is an obvious analysis here, based on A-level economics. The market sets the price and demand is highly price-inelastic. In pub vernacular, no matter how high you jack the cost of tickets, some mug will always pay.

True? True. The 912 away tickets returned to Arsenal by City made the news precisely because it was unusual. Ticket prices have risen, in real terms, as much as 1,000 per cent since the start of the Premier League era. But top-flight grounds are both bigger and fuller now than ever. Seat occupancy consistently averages above 90 per cent and there are long waits for season tickets at most top clubs.

It’s hardly as though football is detached from any other branch of mainstream sport, either. I’d like to see Wales v England in the Six Nations this year but, as always, the Millennium Stadium is sold out and tickets with a face value between £60-£80 are now being resold online for between £235-£800. Pay it? If I wasn’t so convinced that Wales were going to get royally hosed, I might just do.

Why? Because I’m an irrational economic agent. Or a goon, as my wife would say. This week I snapped up a ticket for the Friday of the Ashes Test at Lord’s, which will cost me £120. (The cheque’s in the post, Ian.) Silly money? Yep. Could I watch it at home on Sky? Yep. But, well, it’s Lord’s, isn’t it? The Aussies, isn’t it? Can’t miss it. The only consolation is that there will be stories in the week before the Test of even muggier mugs than me paying over a grand to get in. There always are.

So why is football in a funk? Two reasons suggest themselves. The first is that football supporters realise they are being exploited because they can’t, or won’t, shop around. If Arsenal are too expensive, there are only a few commendable souls who will give it up and start supporting Barnet. City fans, enjoying their first League championship in more than 40 years, are unlikely to switch in their droves to follow a cheaper alternative like, say, Stockport County.

In that sense the Premier League fan is — even if this is self-imposed — a captive of the market who must either pay the price or starve, while the biggest clubs are working as a form of cartel, fleecing fans they know are addicted to their product. (The clubs’ argument would be that the product is good, not to mention very expensive to produce.)

But there’s another factor, too, which drills down to a deeper seam of resentment about the way the game has changed. The fact that Arsenal v City costs as much as the cheap seats for Tosca at the Royal Opera House is a clear illustration of football’s middle-class takeover.

Football clubs, once beacons of working-class community and identity, are now brands for half-hearted ABC1 wine-bar plonkers like me to follow. To borrow an image from Roy Keane, £62 is a prawn sandwich sort of price.

In that sense, the economic explosion of the Premier League years has improved the technical quality of English football no end but it has diluted its soul. It is increasingly apparent that football made a pact with the devil some time around 1992. Sixty-two quid, it would appear, is the price.

Cook hasn’t got the write stuff

Tremendous man, Alastair Cook, and a great cricket captain. But he’s rather prone to the sportsman’s curse of mangling the English language. After the second ODI this week, he said that India “outskilled” England. Outskilled? Sounds like a word for moving a telesales call centre from Basingstoke to Mumbai rather than a euphemism for “played better than”. England captains have often turned out to be erudite writers in their retirement. Cookie, I fear, is unlikely to join their number.

Scott of the Scots’ grave expectations

Quote of the week comes from Scott Johnson, interim coach of Scotland for the Six Nations. Asked about his mate Andy Robinson’s sacking, he said: “As my father used to say, there are 12 billion people lying in cemeteries who thought they were indispensable so you just move on.” Johnson is not known for his touchy-feely managerial style but, even by his abrasive standards, that’s a bleak sentiment with which to kick off a new international season. Or is he getting his excuses in early?

Blustering Blatter’s star falls further

Good old Sepp Blatter. Fifa’s preposterous gasbag-in-chief is many things but short on self-confidence? Never. Speaking to Sky Sports this week, he explained the reason why he was booed by crowds during the last Olympics. It was the usual combination of bluster and BS. “This was just a very small boos and stars are always booed so I’m a star,” he said. Did someone say “logical fallacy”? Amazingly, they did not. I suppose we’ll all miss Blatter when he’s gone. Right? Guys? Right? Oh.

Johnson plummets into circle of hell

The sad decline of Michael Johnson, the Manchester City player once tipped to captain England, is hardly unique. But it’s still depressing. Football is littered with players who had the talent but never got the break, or got the break but never had the talent. How sad then, to have the talent and the break, and still balls it up. Johnson is a Profligate — a member of that wretched race whom Dante placed in the seventh circle of hell, to suffer for violence against themselves. Miserable.